Visitors to Saigon’s Book Street are having difficulty finding a legal
parking space as both of the venue’s two parking lots have been shut down by
Doan Ngoc Hai, leader of Saigon’s ‘sidewalk clearing’ campaign.

HCM City’s cultural authorities’ efforts to promote book reading as a
lifelong habit have been successful, drawing a higher number of visitors to
recent book exhibitions and fairs in the past six months.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Vietnamese diaspora in Australia
and indeed, the title of Cat Thao Nguyen's memoir denotes a sense of reassuring
finality, of landing confidently on safe soil but before such moments of grace,
the reader is taken on an extraordinary tale of deprivation, torture and death,
but also crucially of endurance: what Nguyen calls "the nimble impulses of
survival".

Representatives from authorised publishing houses have raised their concerns
about the increase in illegally printed books in Viet Nam, which they say are
seriously affecting their business and reputation.

When student Nguyen Hong Nhung saw "Killer with a Festering Head" on
someone's smartphone, she wanted the banned comic book too. Though Vietnam's
censors had yanked it from stores, finding a digital copy wasn't exactly
hard.

HANOI — From irreverent cartoons to "depraved" short stories, Vietnam's pop
culture is attracting the attention of print censors who experts say are
struggling to accept an increasingly brash literary scene.

HANOI - Nearly 9,000 illegally printed books, along with hundreds of
zincographs and transparent copies, were found and seized in Hanoi's Huu Duc
Printing and Trading Limited Company last weekend by the city police and Market
Watch Department, said the Vietnam news agency.

HANOI — As communist Vietnam has become more open to the outside world, and
less focused on the bitter legacy of war, the country's authors too have moved
on, offering readers stories about modern everyday life.

PARIS — An incendiary novel by Vietnam's most popular dissident writer takes
on the mythical figure of Ho Chi Minh, claiming the "Father of the Nation" had
a secret lover half his age - and that she was raped and murdered by his own
Communist comrades.